Keep Your Right Up

Keep Your Right Up (French: Soigne ta droite / Une place sur la terre) is a 1987 film, written, directed by, and starring French Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard.

Soigne ta droite is a phrase from boxing - a trainer's call to "keep your right up". The immediate reference is to Jacques Tati's first short film, Soigne ton gauche (Keep Your Left Up). But this is neither a comedy in the classical sense, nor a film about boxing. Godard describes it as "the camera versus landscapes over 17 rounds". It may also be described as a film which does a two-way travel between sky and earth, between comic and experimental, between shadow and light. With humour and multiplying literary references and citations, Godard question himself on life and thus on death, within his kaleidoscope of images. This engaging film, which mixes genres, goes through the shadowy sky of the history of cinema a luminous way.

Plot

Described by Godard as "a fantasy for actor, camera and tape recorder", this film is made up several sketches in which certain actors play several real or fictional roles to a background of rock music. The film is divided into three sections which inter-cross throughout. In each, a group of people search for their proper place on earth.

In the first, a group of musicians search for the right sound, the ideal harmony. In the second, a man searches for an ideal society and wonders if he is on the wrong planet. In the third, some travellers search for their destination, as Ulysses did in the bygone days.

Each group has its own project, but the story is really about projection (as in film projection) as the essence of man's adventure on earth. A very beautiful voice presents the film, leads it along, prepares for what follows and gives us the illusion of taking part in the art of creation.

External links

• Soigne ta droite at the Internet Movie Database